Having lived through the time periods where products were supposed to be vastly superior to today's products, I'd have to disagree with the lack of quality-assuming an item is a quality item to begin with. Quality has always been a bell curve, with a few failing soon, the majority lasting a long time, and a few lasting well beyond their expected life span.
I well remember 1950's, 1960's and 1970's cars that were rusted out in 5-6 years. It wasn't unusual to see cars in a junk yard that had 50,000 or 60,000 miles on them. Alternators, generators, starters seemed to routinely failed around 50,000 miles, and 100,000 out of a drive train was the exception rather than the norm. Taking a long trip was an adventure; it wasn't a matter of if you'd break down, it was a matter of where you'd break down. Our current cars (both 2006's) have north of 100,000 miles on them and are completely reliable and have been trouble free. My pickup (a 1999) has about 96,000 on it and has also been trouble free for the 4 years I've owned it.
The junk yards were also littered with washers, dryers and refrigerators that had failed and were junked rather than fixed. When we built our home in 1995 we bought all new kitchen appliances-I've replace the latch on the dishwasher door (a $12 part) and the flap spring on the water/ice maker (about $6). Never a major repair.
About 5 years ago we purchased a new front load washer and dryer because our 25 year old set was not only inefficient, but starting to fail in multiple ways. Problems? When we first tried to run the dryer it wouldn't ignite. The next day we had the replacement part in hand (the manufacturer overnighted it to us), and I removed the old igniter (with a huge Maytag label on it) and replaced it with the new part (without the Maytag label on it) and we haven't had an issue since. We've been happy enough with them that we also purchased the same models for our lake home.
Vacuums? After having several cheaper ones fail (including a Hoover that literally blew up in a shower of sparks) we purchased 3 Dyson vacuums and have not had a problem since. Two at our main house, and one at our lake home. That's been close to 10 years ago and I haven't had a single problem with the Dysons.
Car parts? I haven't had the originals fail in many years, so I haven't had to replace much. The few parts that I have needed to replace have been good quality (timing belts and kits, plugs, etc.).
Computers? I've been around IT most of my adult life, and I can assure you that not only are systems more affordable, but both the hardware and software is vastly superior in quality to the equipment of 20 or 30 years ago. At Burroughs and Unisys we had a fleet of technicians that were always busy at customer sites repairing down equipment. Today's hardware is vastly more reliable, with much higher uptime. And swapping out components is much faster than replacing a memory chip on a board. The software has been made so user friendly and simple that even my mother could understand it well enough to use email.
One of the things that I always get a chuckle from is the folks that complain about a lack of modern quality. I've heard that same complaint for decades-including an old farmer in the 1950's who swore his mule team was more reliable than those new fangled tractors, and a neighbor who was sure the newer cars were worse than his rusted out rattle trap mid-60's Ford Falcon. "Yep" he'd say, "They don't make 'em like this any more".
Thank goodness they don't make 'em like that anymore.
Times change, and it seems that people don't.
